Courting disaster

The attention of the country, or at least that part of it not yet entirely alienated from the political process, focused this morning on the Supreme Court, which convened to hear the thorny case of Johnson v Democracy.

Of course the government would prefer us to view the divide as The People v The Establishment, with Johnson identifying himself as the champion of the former. He has abandoned the pretence that the suspension of parliament was not intended to suppress opposition, and is instead defending it as a legitimate political manoeuvre which the courts have no business interfering with.

This is probably a smart strategy; if the justices decide in his favour he can claim vindication, while if they rule against him it will only burnish his populist reputation.

My prediction, for what it’s worth, is that the judges will decline to overrule the executive, which will give Johnson the confidence to ignore the law compelling him to delay Brexit.

It’s looking more likely that any election will come after we’re out of the EU, and you’d have to fancy Johnson’s chances in that scenario. I’ve been swinging between hope and despair on this issue for the past few months, but the latter emotion is definitely predominant right now.

Judicial discomfort

On the face of it, today’s court ruling declaring that the government had acted unlawfully in suspending Parliament is a bit of a personal disaster for Boris Johnson, as it sees him labelled by senior judges as a liar who has misled no less a personage than the Queen herself.

While this is clearly embarrassing for a Conservative Prime Minister, Johnson may not be too dismayed. There is a good chance that the Supreme Court will overturn the ruling next week, freeing him from the obligation to submit to troublesome parliamentary scrutiny, and the whole thing plays into his preferred narrative, in which he is a champion of the People, standing up to out-of-touch elites.

More problematic may be the release of the government’s own forecast of the potential outcome of a no-deal scenario, which makes pretty grim reading.

The degree to which any of this will change sentiment in the country at large remains to be seen though. My suspicion is that it will only encourage people to either dig themselves further into their entrenched positions, or confirm them in their alienation. I guess we’ll find out when the general election eventually comes, assuming Johnson doesn’t just abolish democracy altogether in the meantime.